DrewEckhardt

You can mount hard luggage on most bikes, with panniers having less effect on handling than top cases on a rear rack. Givi 50 liter bags are big enough to hold one medium sized riig, an open faced helmet around one of the corners, and a jump suit. Sport touring bikes are a good choice since most have enough room for your hard luggage plus an extra gear bag bungeed to the passenger seat and they offer enough wind protection that you don't get tired after riding 100 miles to a drop zone.

No. PD has never made a canopy more sensitive to control input (intended or not) than the Stiletto (John LeBlanc observed jumpers having roll axis stability problems on landing). Like other ellipticals it's inappropriate for people with fewer than 300 jumps. A 190 is a good idea too.

My wife finds things for me, like when the stereo remote control (there's no volume adjustment except on the remote) went on walkabout and ended up on the kitchen window sill. I also buy end up buying new tools. Got a new drill when mine some how ended up in a container under the fish tank stand. I don't know how many automatic center punches I own.

Black Cherry Almond. v Best energy bar ever. Tastes OK, even better than Crunchy Peanut Butter which is also tolerable. You can actually chew Cliff bars, they fit nicely in a cycling jersey pocket, and a few of the flavors taste half decent. Some of the Luna bars actually compare well in the flavor department to candy bars. They have chocolate coatings. While made for women they're strong enough for a man.

When your cost on it may have been under $1 that's entirely reasonable. When your cost was $1 and $1.25 is the middle ground that's fine too. Once inflation and local costs of living are factored in I don't make more than I did in 2001. The kids can't get unpaid internships because those are going to people with graduate degrees that can't get paying jobs. Times are tight and everybody is suffering. It's smart to see what you can squeeze out especially on discretionary spending where a "no" answer means you might go elsewhere.

I don't know. Make me a reasonable offer. Not enough; $1, $100, $1000 less as a counter depending on selling price; or the same asking price are all reasonable responses to whatever they suggest. The point is that you're a reasonable person (you don't want to warehouse your crap) but they're not being reasonable yet. The first party to name a price when negotiating always looses but as a seller you need to start someplace. My wife (mostly) and I have sold three homes. The smart strategy is to start at a realistic price (buyers need to take you seriously) beyond where you'd settle. They always want to win a little. I sold left overs from my vacuum tube video hobby starting at a higher realistic price and settling for a good deal to me with free shipping (world wide. USPS does not charge dimensional weight) included. People want to get a "good deal" Right. It's business. The buyer's personal situation is irrelevant. If anything they should pay more since you're acting as bar tender/psychiatrist. You can't inflate it because buyers won't take you seriously, but you can start a little above average "reasonable" prices plus add real and perceived buyer value which in and of itself turns a profit. Little details like new wall plates, cabinet hardware, towel racks and new non-rental carpet do wonders for home selling prices. "Free" shipping even for international buyers works.

The 90s called... they wanted their board back. I had my Tom Stanton board made with a groovy wavy checkerboard pattern with white paint over clear carbon fiber. If I knew where it was I'd hang it on the wall in my man cave.

Does anyone know if he stated this publicly? Tamara Koyn's notes from John's August 18 2001 canopy seminar at Archway Skydiving Center state the following: In the PD line of canopies, the Stiletto is most responsive to toggle input. Canopies released after the Stiletto require more input to roll. This is because John observed jumpers oscillating on the roll axis while swooping with their Stilettos. http://www.koyn.com/CloudDancer/articles/2001/CF0801.html For other manufacturers the subjective impression is that their canopies are less responsive than a same-sized Stiletto (the Diablo being the only exception I'm aware of and the Samurai close enough that I found it reasonable) and logical explanation that too many people found the Stiletto "twitchy." Both of these paragraphs are true, and good advice to the OP about safety concerns, but they kind of contradict each other. So we have to ask ourselves, which characteristics are better or "safer"? Neither or both? It depends whether you're performing intentional speed increasing turns prior to landing. When you're not it might be better for the canopy to build less speed and recover positively since when it levels out high and then accelerates back to trim speed (I haven't jumped a canopy where it's as bad as a surge from releasing brakes) ungraceful landings with grass stains are often the result while accelerated flight into the ground tends to break things. When you are making turning approaches, turning too low and digging out is a not uncommon approach to dealing with such canopies but is unforgiving and likely to cause problems. A carving approach where you can maintain roll angle and have latitude in how much altitude you loose for the turn angle and distances is safer and faster but less common. Moderate length and slightly negative is probably the right answer for people with average testosterone poisoning levels (It's pretty easy to change your mind about "I'll never hook turn", likely for the under 30 male crowd, and still happens plenty with older guys). In theory short and slightly negative might be better; I don't know if I haven't run into that because of market requirements (if you're going to swoop, long will build more speed) or physics. Not yet mentioned is that recovery arc length increases with wing loading. With acceptable wing loading you could be at short and slightly negative.

A vacation. Including weekends and holidays I haven't had more than four days in a row off since 2005. I worked May except when sleeping (6 hours a night), commuting, beer on Thursdays, and a couple afternoons with my wife. I've slacked off since then and actually worked less than 100 hours one week in June. I'm working now in an IM conference with my Chinese co-workers (they don't type that fast and it's too distracting to do other real work). Absolutely. People are entitled to all that comes with their natural state. If the governments are going to make subsistence hunting and farming on national lands illegal it needs to provide (not necessarily tasty) food. If the governments are going to make camping in the parks illegal they need to provide (perhaps dormitory style) shelter. I'm entitled to whatever I contracted for, including accepted standards of care/design/manufacturing (my car should not burst into flames when I hit a speed bump).

Fully elliptical canopies like the Stiletto and Katana are more sensitive to control input, intended or otherwise. They take a lot less to enter a steep diving turn. People unintentionally over-control them when turning to avoid obstacles, hit the ground, and break and/or die. They have a tendency to over-steer and continue to turn once control input is removed especially with the brakes stowed. Combined with control sensitivity that means failure to deal with opening anomalies and/or sub-optimal body position are likely to lead to a spinning opening with line twists that needs to be cutaway. This is not good when combined with learning wing suit flight - I and most of the people I know who insisted on using their usual elliptical canopies have had cutaways. Nearly all modern canopies are less sensitive to control input than Stilettos because John Leblanc observed people having problems with roll-axis stability on landing. The Stiletto also has a very positive recovery arc. My Stiletto 120 would achieve level flight on landing after a speed inducing turn with no toggle or rear riser input. This is bad because you're more likely to turn low so the canopy doesn't plane out high and be in the habit of digging out which won't work if you get too low. Although a Stiletto won't dive as long and hard as more modern designs, at the same size it may be more likely to get you in trouble for those reasons. With fewer than 300 jumps (500 was the historic recommendation) you have no business under an elliptical canopy of any size. Regardless of jump numbers you're inviting broken bones or worse if you start jumping an elliptical without being proficient at making flat turns before and after plane-out and doing so instinctively when things go wrong. More modern performance oriented designs like the Katana, Sabre 2, and Samurai will stay in a dive longer and gain more speed. More speed means that when you screw up there's going to be more kinetic energy and a higher chance of breaking things. A Navigator or Spectre would be friendlier here, although the accepted wisdom is that canopies like the Sabre2/Pilot/Lotus/Safire are good canopies for less experienced jumpers when loaded within Brian Germain's table. The main canopy is built for fun. You don't need to down size and shouldn't be jumping with a wing loading over 1.1 pounds per square foot (assuming you can do all of Brian and Bill's exercises under the 190).

Contact sports. Rugby, football, etc. Something vaguely like 3+ Gs of opening shock.

Since it's not a social form of skydiving most people find the fun runs out soon.

For cheap food we split either a 2 entree combo from the Hawaiian BBQ place for $6 or a torta and tacos from the neighborhood taqueria. Better than a chain and usually cheaper.

Hog wash. Well maintained gear is as about as safe as it was brand new. You're getting the same TSO whether you spend $400 on your used Javelin container or $2000 on a new one. A PD reserve which has sat in a cool dry closet for 15 years is as good as a new one but may be 1/2 or 1/3 the price. Ask your self, how much do you want to spend looking good on the ground? I paid a total of $700 for my classic accuracy container and reserve. It's fine.

1. My money going to buy people new cars instead of getting my step kids through college disgusts me. It's bread and circuses of the worst sort. 2. It's the housing crisis all over where we're encouraging people to spend irresponsibly. Most people who are in a position to afford a new car should have a trade-in worth $3500-$4500. 3. It allows the same SUV loop hole that we have in the CAFE standards. If it's reasonable to legislate fuel economy it's not fair to declare some passenger vehicles "light trucks" subject to lower standards. Encouraging people to buy SUVs which get 20 MPG when station wagons would work as well is stupid.

Bullet proof and cheap too. I bought a life time supply after the Clinton ban for under $5 each.

Genuine USGI surplus 20 round. Feed perfectly. Great ergonomics. Affordable before whatever insanity currently going on happened. Not pretty since the anodizing has worn off but we're looking for functionality. Government contract 30 round magazines work well too. Green followers are supposedly better but I never noticed a difference. Apart from aesthetics, what were the problems?

$1000-$7000. At $1000, people wll make fun of your old gear and used Pro-tec helmet. At $7000, all your colors will match, you may wait six months for delivery, and you're going to loose a lot when you sell to downsize. At $3000, your used gear and new jumpsuit may actually be nice.

Thank you lisa for posting this. If I have something personal that I want to share then I should be the one to post about it. If anyone has the need to post a thread about me concerning personal issues don't. You all are free to have whatever secret societies you want but they become public when the first communication is sent to people other than the membership. "It" has been alluded to whatever "It" is. Given average boredom levels, the lack of news which is both interesting and not depressing, and slim chance of persons under 18 years of age being involved "It" may be the best subject for speculation, rumor, and innuendo. You need to complain to whoever made the announcement and live with whatever the rest of us decide to do based on our grade-school experience in speculation until we find something more fun to do with our time. Like you learned in kindergarten requests to stop are going to prolong the speculation and torment. I don't care one way or another and just feel like yelling at people but get in more trouble speaking my mind to the C-level executives who most need a wake-up call.

I would say you should wait a lot more than just 2 seconds. That was almost a normal delay for me out of an aircraft. I would say 5-10 would be better when you actually have some airspeed to prevent the drogue from just flopping around on your back. After 3 seconds you're going 60 MPH and are going to have plenty of drag. It's about like getting out of a Cessna, enough to get a good sub-terminal track going. A 46" pilot chute will get you a canopy plenty soon on a go-and-throw BASE jump. Tandem drogues look bigger. I can't say that I'd want 100-200 pounds of nervous living payload in front of me on a zero airspeed exit, although I wouldn't want to be a pack mule on normal jumps either.

I haven't had satellite or cable TV in the seven years after I realized that I hadn't watched anything in six months, but had been spending $60 a month on a package which had things that I might watch. If it's cool enough some one will put it on skydivingmovies.com and/or youtube.

At many DZs it'll be bigger than you want unless you're interested in classic accuracy which calls for larger parachutes or you're a larger person. How big are you? What canopies is it sized for? Are there any special circumstances we should know about, like a missing leg that keeps you from walking on landing, a desire to get into BASE jumping as soon as you meet the requirements for a first jump course, or trying to get on your universities' skydiving team which jumps into the football games?

You could use mechanical leverage. For example you could squeeze your arms through the first jumper's harness just above the hip junction and hold on to the opposite side of the harness. So you'd only have to support 3X your weight, multiplied by the length of arm bone outside the harness, divided by the length of arm bone inside the harness. With a greater than 3:1 ratio of arm-bone between the main lift webs to outside that and a 3G opening shock you'd have to support less than your full weight. No clue how strong your arm bones are with bending loads or how strong elbows are. Obviously you'd have to be good enough at back flying to make that dock.

As far as gear, etc... this doesn't apply. As far as other people trying to kill me, yes, I agree. Sometimes we learn about gear the hard way. We've had reserve container lockups due to interactions with AAD cutters and auxiliary opening devices. Back in the 1990s when non-Dacron lines become common, we learned that accepted grommet seating procedures weren't enough. People died from main/reserve entanglements. Before that we learned that a mesh manufacturer's flame retardant coating became acidic thus ruining the structural integrity of reserves. Without a rigging ticket and experience you don't know the shape your gear is actually in. I knew a woman who made a jump on a rig where the manufacturer neglected to do some of the structural stitching. She ended up sitting weird in the harness, had it checked, and the consensus was that it would have failed on reserve deployment. Incorrect harness assembly has caused fatalities. I've seen incorrectly installed toggles come off on landing. With small parachutes that would be fatal. A lot of people also die in general aviation accidents related to skydiving. Very few skydivers are actually in a position to detect problems with maintenance and piloting and most don't have the knowledge. Most people who die skydiving made a series of mistakes getting there, although death is still possible from other sources.

The first thing you do when jumping with other people is fly away. When you do a good job you're over a thousand feet away. Then everyone opens their parachutes at about the same time. Outside Hollywood you're never going to be close enough to save some one with a double malfunction unless you're an AFF instructor and hanging on at the time they deploy.